chapter FIVE
TWO weeks later Mia was watching the clock, thinking that for once in her working life she might actually get off on time. Her shift, one of those rare short shifts, was due to finish at two and things were looking good. With Evie going off to Luca’s party tonight—the one she was not going to attend, no matter how much Evie begged—she had a quiet night of reading planned.
The latest blockbuster novel had been sitting on her bedside table, gathering dust, for too long.
She glanced nervously over at the man in question as he spoke on the phone at the other end of the central monitoring station. She’d managed to keep her attraction at bay this past fortnight—until last night. A cluttered, semi-dark storeroom had seriously tried her resolve to keep away when they’d both ended up inside. His body had been big and close, his lips had kicked up into a frank smile, his gaze firmly fixed on her mouth.
How she hadn’t pushed him against the wall and ravaged him she still wasn’t sure.
But she hadn’t. She’d caught herself at the last second. Remembered that she’d already broken her golden rule once and she wasn’t going to do it again. Even if he was the most skilled, most exciting lover she’d ever known.
Unfortunately, the buzz from last night’s near kiss was still vibrating through her system and they’d been trading furtive glances all morning. He’d looked at her with undiluted lust half an hour ago and she still could barely see straight.
His gaze met hers again, his brown eyes knowing, and her pulse picked up a notch.
‘Ambulance two minutes out.’
The urgent note in Nola’s voice dragged her attention back to reality and Mia looked down to where the efficient triage nurse sat, the red emergency phone to her ear, speaking out loud as she wrote the details down from the ambulance coms centre.
‘Thirty-year-old male. Jumper. Two storeys. Bilateral comminuted fractured tib and fibs, right compound fractured femur, query fractured pelvis, query spinal injuries, fractured right ribs, GCS twelve, major internal injuries, query ruptured spleen, hypotensive and tachycardic.’
Luca joined them, all business now as he read the details again over Nola’s shoulder.
‘I’ll page Ortho and General Surgery,’ Mia said, grabbing the phone nearest her as the distant wail of a siren permeated the thick walls of the hospital.
Luca also picked up a phone. ‘I’ll alert blood bank that we might need to initiate the massive transfusion protocol.’
By the time the ambulance pulled up a minute later, everything was prepped and Luca and Mia were standing outside, ready to receive the patient.
Luca grabbed the ambulance doorhandle and pulled it open as the paramedic driving the vehicle joined them, launching into a rapid-fire handover of injuries, actual and suspected.
He and the treating paramedic pulled the gurney out of the back of the ambulance. The patient was moaning, his face covered by an oxygen mask.
‘Pupils equal and reacting,’ the paramedica continued as they pushed the gurney towards the entrance, Mia and Luca keeping pace. ‘BP ninety over sixty, pulse one hundred and forty, resps fifty and shallow. Right chest tube inserted on scene, two IV cannulae wide open.’
‘Do we know what happened?’ Mia asked, clinging to the gurney rail as they practically flew inside to the prepared trauma cubicle.
‘Paternity test showed he wasn’t the baby’s daddy,’ the paramedic stated dispassionately.
Mia felt a prickle up her spine as she and Luca shared a look. ‘Is his name Stan?’ she asked.
The paramedic nodded. ‘Stanley James.’
Repeat customers—especially suicides attempts—were reasonably common in the department. As were frequent-flyer drug addicts and patients with chronic conditions. Mia treated them all with courtesy and professionalism, careful not to get emotionally invested in them.
But this man had held her at knifepoint. Had yanked her back into the convoluted emotions of her childhood. Had been the catalyst for what had happened later that night with Luca.
Mia felt sick as two nurses descended and between the four of them they quickly transferred Stan to the hospital gurney on the count of three. Whether she liked it or not, she and Stanley were connected.
And she really didn’t want to have to deal with that.
Stan pulled his mask off and grabbed her hand. ‘I told you,’ he said. ‘I told you she was cheating on me.’
Mia looked into his anguished face, trying not to see her father, trying only to see the man who had menaced her with a knife. But he looked … broken.
Just like her father.
‘It’s going to be okay, Stan,’ she murmured, replacing his mask as people bustled around her. ‘We’re going to get you patched up.’
He pulled it off again. ‘No. Just leave me. Just leave me to die.’
Mia and Luca’s gazes met for a moment. She felt rage build inside as she looked back down at Stan. He’d taken the coward’s way out, just like her father. Her father had walked, Stan had jumped—both ways showed very little regard for the people left behind.
For a tiny baby. For a bewildered ten-year-old girl.
‘Please, just let me die,’ Stan begged.
Mia bit down on the urge to tell Stan that if he’d really wanted to die he should have jumped from a higher building. The fact that he hadn’t spoke volumes about the incident. She doubted it was a true attempt—more like a cry for help.
And she was damned if she was going to let him die on her watch.
She put the mask back. ‘Can’t do that, I’m afraid, Stan.’
‘We need X-Ray,’ Luca said. ‘And get Psych down here. I want to consult with John Allen.’
Luca and Mia, their personal situation forgotten, worked methodically over the next hour to stabilise Stan for Theatre. They intubated, placed lines and another chest tube, gave blood and plasma expanders, consulted with Ortho, General Surgery and Radiology.
And all the time Luca was chanting, Come on, Stan, come on Stan, come on Stan. Don’t die. Don’t die. Don’t die. If it took everything he had, Luca was not going to let this man die.
Not that he’d ever been particularly emotional about life-and-death situations. Being a trauma specialist, he saw the struggle between the two on a regular basis. Like two powerfully competing forces pulling in opposite directions. He worked hard to save every patient but not even he was arrogant enough to assume that hard work was always enough.
Sometimes, no matter what he threw at a patient, they died.
He got that. People died.
Children, teenagers, athletes, mothers, forty-year-olds with everything to live for.
People died.
Hell … they were all dying.
But the truth was, Stan had struck a chord. And probably for the first time ever he actually felt personally invested in a patient. And not because Stan had threatened him with a knife but because Luca knew all about the demons that had driven him.
He knew how it felt to be betrayed by the person you loved. How it felt to have your whole world yanked out from under you. And how life-changing that could be.
He knew how it felt to be a father one moment and then suddenly not.
To feel powerless.
To feel alone.
It may have been a whole bunch of years ago but some things never left you.
He glanced at Mia as she took a phone call from the lab. Mia, who was working just as hard to pull Stan through. The man who had threatened to stab her, who had slashed her arm with a knife.
What was driving her?
The same things that had driven her to cry out in her sleep that night? That had spurred her to seek amnesia in his arms?
What were the things that haunted her? That made her tough and feisty and not the cuddling type?
Had Stan stirred them up for her as he had stirred things up from his past? Daddy, come back. That’s what she’d cried out that night. Did Stan remind her of her father as he had reminded him of his sixteen-year-old self?
‘Haemoglobin’s eight,’ Mia announced. She ordered another bag of blood to be hung and administered stat. ‘Let’s get him to Theatre for that laparotomy,’ she said. ‘He’s bleeding from somewhere.’
As if by magic, an anaesthetist, a nurse and two orderlies arrived and Luca dragged himself out of his reverie to help with the handover.
Within ten minutes Stan had been whisked away and the two of them stood in an empty trauma bay. The floor was littered with packaging and discarded dressing material that had fallen short of the bin. And where there’d been frantic activity and the beeps and alarms of monitors seconds ago, there was now absolute quiet.
Luca glanced at Mia watching Stan disappear down the corridor with a look on her face he couldn’t quite work out.
He put his arm around her shoulder. ‘He’ll be okay,’ he said, even though he had no earthly idea why he’d said it and absolutely no way of knowing how true it was.
Mia nodded. Physically, sure … maybe. After an extended recovery period and if they could control the bleeding and get him through about a hundred complications that could arise.
But mentally?
Would Stan ever be the same again? Was her father?
For a few insane seconds she leaned into the hug, soaking up the comfort, surprised to find that she needed it as a block of unexpected emotion lodged in her chest, invading her throat, threatening to choke her.
And she hated it.
She pulled away, stripped off her plastic gown and peeled off her gloves, disposing of them in an overflowing bin.
‘I’ll follow up with John,’ she said.
And left Luca behind in the bay.
Later that evening, Mia accompanied Evie to the party. She’d finally caved to her friend’s relentless insistence that she go. Stan’s case had been playing on her mind all afternoon and she knew she wouldn’t be able to settle to a book. She needed a distraction and there was no doubt Luca distracted the hell out of her.
That brief comforting hug had been playing on her mind too but she pushed it aside. The distraction she needed from Luca did not involve anything as nurturing as comfort. She needed hard and ready. Hot and sweaty. Down and dirty.
And since she knew he gave it better than anyone else—could obliterate everything else from her brain—only he would do.
The party was in full swing when they finally stepped inside two hours late. Familiar faces milled in groups all around Luca’s apartment and greeted them enthusiastically, despite their tardiness. Shift workers accepted that shift times varied and punctuality was fluid.
Mia felt Luca’s eyes on her instantly and looked directly at him. Neither of them smiled as music pulsed around them and their gazes ate each other up.
Luca, surprised to see her, devoured the sight of her as she shrugged out of her leather jacket and made her way over to Luke Williams, one of The Harbour’s plastic surgeons specialising in burns, and his partner, Lily, a nurse at SHH.
Mia was wearing a tight denim skirt that didn’t quite reach her knees, a pair of long rainbow-striped socks that ended in little bows just below her knees and a singlet-style shirt that did up snugly across her front with corset-style lacing.
Thank goodness his apartment was centrally heated.
Her hair hung loose around her shoulders and an image of him removing that lacing with his teeth surrounded by the curtain of her golden hair wreaked havoc in his groin.
His gaze drifted to the reddish-pink scar on her upper arm visible from all the way across the room. It reminded him of that night and what had happened.
It reminded him of today. Of anguish so familiar he had recognised it immediately. Of those brief few seconds with Mia after Stan had left for Theatre when he’d felt a strange moment of solidarity, of connection.
He pushed the thought aside. Stan had made it out of surgery and was stable in Intensive Care. And Mia had stepped away from him.
Work was work.
This was a party.
He took a swig out of his long-necked beer, his eyes never leaving her. She laughed at something Luke said and shook her head, her hair swinging enticingly around the cleavage barely contained by the faux corset top.
She glanced at him and their gazes locked, the message in her eyes heating his loins. He took another pull from his beer, keeping up the eye contact, matching her frank, unwavering stare. If she wanted to play chicken, he was up for it. He smiled to himself as Lily said something to her and Mia was forced to break contact first.
Why had she come when she’d been so adamant she wouldn’t?
Just for the sex she was patently up for? Or was there something more to it? Had Stan rattled her again? Or maybe that moment they’d shared had? Had she come to prove it hadn’t? Or to explore if it had?
The thought alarmed him and Luca served himself up a mental slap. What the hell business was it of his? Her motivations? He knew what he wanted and it didn’t involve second-guessing a gorgeous woman who had come here to have sex with him. Whatever she was offering, he was going to take it.
And have a damn fine time doing so.
* * *
Mia wandered around the different groups of people, stopping to chat, talk shop, laugh with her friends and colleagues. And all the time she was conscious of Luca tracking her around the room. He hadn’t even said hello to her but she could sense his intense interest, feel the weight of his gaze, the heat of his laser-like focus trained squarely on her back.
Sure, he was playing the perfect host—attentive and charming as he moved around the apartment—but underneath that bronzed Latin skin she could sense the leashed desire he was just barely keeping a lid on. His glances may be smouldering with lust but she could also feel his impatience as they slowly circled each other.
She walked past a large bay window and stopped to admire the view. She knew he’d have one. A man with heated bathroom tiles would certainly have a view!
The iron arch of the illuminated Sydney Harbour Bridge and the floodlit white sails of the Opera House glowed like beacons in the night. Of course, these could also be seen from the upper floors of SHH but it was still a pretty amazing sight, no matter how many times she’d been privy to it.
The hairs on the back of her neck prickled and she was instantly aware he was zeroing in.
Luca sauntered up to her. ‘I didn’t think you were coming,’ he murmured.
Mia didn’t turn to look at him. She could see his reflection. Tall, broad shouldered, looking very fine in snug blue jeans and a close-fitting black T-shirt.
All he needed was Security emblazoned across the front. Or maybe Italian Stallion.
‘Nice view.’
Luca, who hadn’t taken his eyes of her said, ‘Indeed.’ He took a sip of his beer. ‘The view from my bedroom is even better.’
Mia smiled. ‘Don’t you have guests to entertain?’
Luca chuckled, turning so his back was to the window. Their arms brushed and he felt a kick in his groin. ‘They seem to be amusing themselves just fine.’
Mia turned too just in time to see Finn entering with a stunning-looking redhead she’d not seen before.
‘I didn’t think Finn would come,’ she mused. Evie had been sure of it but she herself hadn’t been convinced.
‘Why not?’ Luca frowned.
‘He’s not really the social type.’
He shrugged. ‘He is tonight.’
Apparently. Very social, if the redhead’s relaxed intimacy was anything to go by. Mia flicked a glance towards Evie and watched her friend’s face fall a little. She gave an inward sigh, wishing she understood Evie’s attraction to the maverick surgeon.
Sure, his legendary status was alluring and he was sexy in a rumpled kind of way. And single. But that just-rolled-out-of-bed look didn’t do it for her.
She preferred clean-shaven men.
Like the one standing beside her.
‘So …’ Luca dropped his head so his mouth was near her ear. ‘About that view?’
Mia felt goose-bumps break out on her arms as her belly constricted. But Evie was looking around with an overly bright smile on her face and Mia knew that her friend needed her.
‘Patience is a virtue,’ she murmured.
She heard Luca chuckling as she slunk away.
* * *
Half an hour later Evie was standing in a circle, ostensibly talking to Mia, Luke Williams and a couple of nurses from the emergency department. But her gaze kept wandering to Finn, who was sitting on the wide windowsill of the bay window, talking to Rupert. He had dismissed the redhead when Rupert had approached and now they seemed to be having quite an intense discussion.
Finn was nursing his usual Scotch and it didn’t look like he appreciated what Rupert had to say. After another minute Rupert shrugged and walked away.
‘Excuse me, guys. I’ll go and grab another drink.’
She felt Mia’s concerned gaze on her as she slipped away but no one else paid any attention. Evie grabbed a beer out of the ice-filled sink then wended her way through to Finn.
Finn watched Evie approach through the prism of his glass. She lifted a beer bottle to her lips and tipped her head back as she drew close. When she was done her lips were moist and he found himself wondering what she tasted like.
He tensed at the errant thought, which cranked up the throb in his already aching arm. That, on top of Rupert’s little chat, made him even crankier.
‘Well, well, well. I thought the Lockheart heiress would be into champagne.’
Evie let the insult slide off her back. She’d learned to chug beer and drink shots at uni just to annoy her parents.
‘Beer is better.’
She stood in front of him, one hand shoved into the front pocket of her skinny jeans, the other one wrapped around the bottle. She was wearing a floaty top that fell off her shoulder, which he studiously ignored.
He raised his glass to the light. ‘Scotch is the only drink.’ It smoothed out the edges and helped with the pain. Physical and mental.
Evie inspected him. Sprawled on the windowsill, his shaggy look was sexy as hell. Unlike other guys she knew, the stubble was real, hinting at disregard rather than fashion. It also lent authenticity to the boast she’d once overheard—apparently he only ever got three or four hours’ sleep a night.
She shook her head. Why? Was it deliberate? Did his brilliant mind never shut off or was it involuntary? Was the mysterious injury responsible for Finn’s chronic insomnia? Or had his time in the army left him with nightmares? It was rumoured he’d been to Afghanistan and Iraq.
Or was it just the redhead or any of the other women he was seen with, keeping him up all night?
She didn’t understand why she felt so compelled to try and figure him out. But she did. ‘What did Rupert want?’
Finn, the glass halfway to his mouth, paused slightly before lifting it to his lips and draining the entire glass.
‘I need another drink,’ he said.
‘I heard you and Rupert talking a couple of weeks ago. It was in the evening … in the outpatients department.’
Finn felt his hackles rise. ‘Spying for Daddy?’ He knew how chummy the hospital’s biggest benefactor was with pernickety Eric Frobisher.
Evie heard the low menace in his voice and watched as his piercing blue eyes practically bored into her.
‘He mentioned surgery.’ Evie paused and perused his hard, shuttered face for any signs of softening. ‘Is there something wrong, Finn?’
Finn heard the quiet strength in her voice. As if it never occurred to her that he wouldn’t confess. The kind of strength that came from growing up in a nurturing environment where a person’s opinion, even a child’s, mattered.
‘I think you should stick with diagnosing complex heart conditions.’
She ploughed on despite his rigid jaw and frigid stare. ‘There are rumours about you being wounded in the army. Do you have some residual effects from that?’
Finn’s heart pounded in his chest. Only little Miss Rich Girl would dare to push him like this. He stood, instantly towering over her, and was gratified to see her take a step back, to see she wasn’t so sure of herself after all. ‘I need a drink.’
He brushed past her without looking back.
Conversation over.
At two am only Mia and Evie remained as Luca shut his door on the last of his guests. He caught Mia’s eye. She’d been a walking, talking temptation all night and now it was time to pay the piper.
Mia grinned at him. ‘I’m going to stay and help Luca clean up,’ she said to Evie, carrying some glasses into the kitchen and setting them on the substantial granite bench top beside the sink.
Evie nodded, tired after her long day shift and distracted by thoughts of Finn, who had hastily downed a drink after their chat then left with the redhead clinging to his arm. ‘I’ll help.’
Luca, picking up some more glasses behind where Evie was located, shook his head and mouthed, ‘No.’
Mia grinned some more. ‘No, Evie. You’re done in. Go to bed. I won’t be far behind you.’ She was so revved up she’d probably come in under a minute.
‘Oh, but—’
‘No buts,’ Luca insisted. ‘Go. We’ll be fine.’
Evie was exhausted. ‘Well … if you’re sure …?’
Luca nodded, vigorously aware that Mia had turned on the tap and was leaning over the sink. ‘Absolutely.’
He ushered Evie out the door and shut it with quiet determination then leant against it, hard. He watched Mia fill the sink with glassware through a haze of high-octane lust.
‘Leave that,’ he said as he slowly prowled towards her.
Mia looked at him and grinned. It faded in a flash at the naked intent in his gaze. ‘It’s just a few dishes,’ she said lamely as her insides melted to the consistency of chocolate sauce.
Just like his lust-drunk eyes.
Luca reached her side, flicked off the tap, swept the remaining dirty dishes into the sink with a huge clatter, grabbed her around the waist and boosted her up onto the bench.
Mia opened her mouth to protest against the tinkling glass and chipping crockery but mostly the cold granite on the backs of her legs. But Luca didn’t give her a chance. He stepped between her thighs, forcing them apart, and claimed her mouth in a kiss that silenced all her inane worries.
A kiss that lit a fuse that ignited a powder keg. After two weeks of abstinence and an evening of sexual chess they devoured each other like a raging bushfire.
Luca slipped his hands under the hem of her skirt, pushing it up her thighs, exposing her flesh and her heat. He dragged her core hard against him, the bench top just the right height, moaning when Mia locked her ankles around his waist, wedging them together as intimately as they could be fully clothed. She gasped as he kissed down her neck—hard, biting kisses that stiffened her nipples to unbearable points.
Yes. This was what she needed.
This.
Something to forget the day.
She grabbed for the snap on his jeans as he squeezed a breast with his hand. She undid his zip, pushed his underwear aside and grasped his warm velvet girth.
His mouth slammed against hers on a full, throaty groan as he fumbled with the lacing of her shirt, half undoing, half tearing at the fabric until it succumbed to his will. He dragged his mouth from hers, down, down, down to her breasts, ripping aside the cups of her transparent bra and gorging on the ripeness of her nipples.
Mia’s back arched, one hand automatically holding his head to her, the other squeezing his rampant erection, rubbing herself against it, whimpering as it caused the most wicked friction.
‘Back pocket,’ Luca whispered as he lifted his head to pay equal homage to her other breast.
Mia fumbled. His lips were creating havoc and she felt like she’d been to the dentist and been given a full body shot.
Limp with lust. Prostrate with pleasure.
Her fingers found the hard edges of foil and whipped it out triumphantly as his hand pushed aside her undies and stroked against her so intimately she thought she was going to die.
Too much more of that and she’d be done.
It was bloody-mindedness alone that accomplished sheathing him as he sought and found where she was hottest. Where she was the most ready.
‘Ah,’ she cried as the friction hit just the right spot. ‘Now,’ she cried, tilting her pelvis in supplication. ‘Now.’
Luca didn’t need a translation. He ran his palms up her back, anchored both hands over her shoulders, leaned forward to suck hard on a ripe, plump, moist nipple and rammed into her in one quick decisive thrust of his hips.
Their combined groan no doubt caused a blip at some seismic centre somewhere.
And then they were moving and pounding together in unison, rocking and rocking, higher and higher, gasping and sighing and reaching for breath until it all coalesced in one magical moment and the stars shattered around them.